The Prosperity of Humankind

Bahá’í International Community

The bedrock of a strategy that can engage the world’s population in
assuming responsibility for its collective destiny must be the consciousness
of the oneness of humankind. Deceptively simple in popular discourse, the
concept that humanity constitutes a single people presents fundamental
challenges to the way that most of the institutions of contemporary society
carry out their functions. Whether in the form of the adversarial structure
of civil government, the advocacy principle informing most of civil law, a
glorification of the struggle between classes and other social groups, or the
competitive spirit dominating so much of modern life, conflict is accepted as
the mainspring of human interaction. It represents yet another expression in
social organization of the materialistic interpretation of life that has
progressively consolidated itself over the past two centuries.

In a letter addressed to Queen Victoria over a century ago, and employing
an analogy that points to the one model holding convincing promise for the
organization of a planetary society, Bahá’u’lláh compared the world to the
human body. There is, indeed, no other model in phenomenal existence to which
we can reasonably look. Human society is composed not of a mass of merely
differentiated cells but of associations of individuals, each one of whom is
endowed with intelligence and will; nevertheless, the modes of operation that
characterize man’s biological nature illustrate fundamental principles of
existence. Chief among these is that of unity in diversity. Paradoxically, it
is precisely the wholeness and complexity of the order constituting the human
body—and the perfect integration into it of the body’s cells—that permit
the full realization of the distinctive capacities inherent in each of these
component elements. No cell lives apart from the body, whether in contributing
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to its functioning or in deriving its share from the well-being of the whole.
The physical well-being thus achieved finds its purpose in making possible the
expression of human consciousness; that is to say, the purpose of biological
development transcends the mere existence of the body and its parts.

What is true of the life of the individual has its parallels in human
society. The human species is an organic whole, the leading edge of the
evolutionary process. That human consciousness necessarily operates through
an infinite diversity of individual minds and motivations detracts in no way
from its essential unity. Indeed, it is precisely an inhering diversity that
distinguishes unity from homogeneity or uniformity. What the peoples of the
world are today experiencing, Bahá’u’lláh said, is their collective coming-
of-age, and it is through this emerging maturity of the race that the principle
of unity in diversity will find full expression. From its earliest beginnings
in the consolidation of family life, the process of social organization has
successively moved from the simple structures of clan and tribe, through
multitudinous forms of urban society, to the eventual emergence of the
nation-state, each stage opening up a wealth of new opportunities for the
exercise of human capacity.

Clearly, the advancement of the race has not occurred at the expense of
human individuality. As social organization has increased, the scope for the
expression of the capacities latent in each human being has correspondingly
expanded. Because the relationship between the individual and society is a
reciprocal one, the transformation now required must occur simultaneously
within human consciousness and the structure of social institutions. It is in
the opportunities afforded by this twofold process of change that a strategy of
global development will find its purpose. At this crucial stage of history,
that purpose must be to establish enduring foundations on which planetary
civilization can gradually take shape.

Laying the groundwork for global civilization calls for the creation
of laws and institutions that are universal in both character and authority.
The effort can begin only when the concept of the oneness of humanity has been
wholeheartedly embraced by those in whose hands the responsibility for decision
making rests, and when the related principles are propagated through both
educational systems and the media of mass communication. Once this threshold
is crossed, a process will have been set in motion through which the peoples of
the world can be drawn into the task of formulating common goals and committing
themselves to their attainment. Only so fundamental a reorientation can
protect them, too, from the age-old demons of ethnic and religious strife.
Only through the dawning consciousness that they constitute a single people
will the inhabitants of the planet be enabled to turn away from the patterns of
conflict that have dominated social organization in the past and begin to learn
the ways of collaboration and conciliation. “The well-being of mankind,”
Bahá’u’lláh writes, “its peace and security, are unattainable unless and until
its unity is firmly established.”